Port Harcourt refinery in Nigeria starts operations

Nigeria’s state-owned Port Harcourt refinery has reportedly started up its CDU 1 this week, with our estimates pinning operations at 20 kbd. Looking ahead, the potential ramp-up to full capacity of 210 kbd would weigh on fuel imports to the country, after Dangote’s rising refinery runs already pressured gasoline imports to multi-year lows since October.

Before the gradual start-up of the privately-held Dangote refinery in Nigeria one year ago, the country’s downstream sector used to be dominated by state-owned facilities that were constructed back in the 1960s-1980s. The 210 kbd Port Harcourt, the 125 kbd Warri and the 110 kbd Kaduna plants boasted a combined capacity of 450 kbd until 2016, after which all of them were subsequently shut down due to financing and technical issues resulting in almost zero operational refining capacity left in late 2018. Since then, throughput rates have been minimal in the 5-20 kbd range due to several modular refineries as well as illegal plants. While the rehabilitation of these state-owned facilities has been a topic of frequent discussion over the past years, only the restoration of the 210 kbd Port Harcourt refinery is making visible progress. While NNPC awarded the $1.5 billion contract for rehabilitation to Italian engineering company Tecnimont SPA and the project began in April 2021, works have seen several delays, with announcements by NNPC already stating last year that operations would start in December 2023. Moreover, in February this year, Shell announced that it had completed the supply of 475 kb of crude from the Bonny Light terminal to the plant via the Bonny-Port Harcourt pipeline.

PPMC crude inventories, kbd

Source: Kpler

NNPC stated on 26 November that CDU 1 (60 kbd) at Port Harcourt has started operations, also claiming that product exports via trucks had commenced. Kpler’s in-house crude stocks data corroborates that test runs have been ongoing, with PPMC inventories dropping from 1.5 Mbbls in August to 1.3 Mbbls in October to around 1 Mbbls in November (current crude inventories would enable refinery runs of around 30 kbd for one month). While CDU 1 has a nameplate capacity of 60 kbd, we estimate the unit to only run around 20 kbd for the rest of the year, potentially reaching full capacity in Q3 2025, contributing to total Nigerian crude runs of 420 kbd in September 2025.  

Nigeria refinery runs outlook, kbd

Source: Kpler

Port Harcourt's second CDU could start test runs in late 2025, pushing the refinery’s crude intake to 150 kbd in December 2026 and total Nigerian throughput to above 700 kbd. As a simple refinery (NCI 4.8) with one 60 kbd CDU, 6 kbd Reformer and without an operational FCC (of which we expect the ramp up in late Q3 2025), we estimate that Port Harcourt’s product output will be mainly gasoline, straight run gasoil and fuel oil. This implies that by Q4 2025, the plant could supply some 24 kbd fuel oil, 15 kbd gasoline, 15 kbd diesel and 6 kbd jet, and some minor volumes of LPG. If CDU 2 were to fully start up, moving capacity to 210 kbd and including all secondary units (which we don’t expect before Q2 2026), product output could theoretically move to 82 kbd gasoline, 78 kbd diesel, 20 kbd jet and 18 kbd residue (fuel oil, bitumen, slurry). We project Port Harcourt to run almost entirely on Nigerian crude grades as it is owned by NNPC and we expect most of the fuel volumes to be consumed by the domestic market and only fuel oil output contributing to product exports. The full ramp-up of the refinery will further improve West African gasoline balances and weigh on fuel imports to Nigeria, a dynamic that is already at play, with October and November seeing gasoline imports to the country drop to the lowest levels in seven years.

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